Cue a different avenue if jumping fails to improve at Haydock

Most chasers make more bad jumping errors early in their careers. As experience builds up, a chaser either commits fewer mistakes, or those who fail to get the hang of it are switched to hurdles, Big Buck’s being a prime example.

Cue Card, who turns 12 in January, however, is an exception. His fall at the 15th in the Charlie Hall, when reaching for the fence in the manner of a novice honing his jumping skills, was his third fall in ten chases, and his second in three starts. Before the first fall of this sequence, when he exited three out in the 2016 Gold Cup, Cue Card had jumped round safely in 20 of his 21 previous chases, an unseat on his second chase outing the only blip.

Veteran chasers of Cue Card’s class rarely fall or unseat. Cue Card is officially rated 168 over fences and, as table 1 shows, since 2006, when you look at the percentage of British chases in which horses aged 11 or older rated 160-plus fell or unseated, these horses failed to get round in just five per cent of races.